214 PAUL POPENOE 



of family expense simply represent that many more opportunities for fric- 

 tion. Services of a consultant in home economics are often invaluable, not 

 merely in aiding a couple to manage the household more intelligently, but 

 in providing them with some objective standards as by a well planned 

 budget and thereby taking away from them the opportunity, which so many 

 of them use to the full extent, of squabbling over the proportion of the income 

 that shall be spent from week to week for various current purposes. 



(3) MENTAL HYGIENE 



This covers many different problems that loom large in every family mal- 

 adjustment. Monotony and deadly routine are factors in the disintegration 

 of many a home, and to avoid them calls for a definite plan and definite ef- 

 fort, made all the more difficult when lack of funds deprives people of the 

 commercial recreations which, for many, are the only ones known in city 

 life. Many a woman suffers from lack of any creative outlet for her energies, 

 or perhaps more frequently from inability to realize that she has plenty of 

 creative outlets available if she only knew how to utilize them. Spread of a 

 more intelligent attitude toward parenthood has been useful in enabling 

 women to find less dissatisfaction and more real pleasure and a feeling of 

 creation in the bearing and rearing of children. This has had an unfortu- 

 nate consequence, however, when in most communities the education of 

 women along these lines has proceeded more rapidly than that of men with 

 a resulting conflict which will be mentioned under the next heading. 



Freedom from fears is of highest importance, and these fears are frequently 

 a fundamental part of the difficulty. (Those relating to sexual adjustment 

 will be dealt with under heading No. 5.) Fear of desertion is a paralyzing 

 factor in many cases, particularly among women with children, although by 

 no means unknown among men. Fear of pregnancy on the part of women 

 has often been represented, during recent years, as a chief cause of family 

 disharmony. Doubtless it is such in many instances, but few of them have 

 been found among our clients. This may be due to a more general dissemi- 

 nation among them of instruction on this point, for Los Angeles county 

 possesses one-fourth of all the birth control clinics in the United States. 

 Once in a while a case appears in which fear of pregnancy is a serious factor, 

 but it is easily dealt with, either by referring the patient to a mother's clinic 

 or, when necessary, by recommending surgical sterilization. 



Definite plans for aiding the family to get sufficient recreation — inexpen- 

 sive, wholesome, and mutual — form an important part of our treatment, 

 and one that requires a survey of community facilities to know what is avail- 

 able for people of different kinds. It will doubtless be the universal experi- 



